Nullifidian > Recent Status Updates

Up to Day 2.

Finished The Winter's Tale, which once again fully justified its status as one of my favorite plays.

Up to Part II, "At the Front"; chapter 1, "Švejk's Misadventures on the Train".

Finished The Two Noble Kinsmen.

Finished King John, which I liked a lot better than on my previous reading. However, in all honesty, I think this may be one time when Shakespeare's work was inferior to his source material, because George Peele's play was excellent, though Shakespeare's depth of characterization is greater, particularly in drawing the Bastard, and he had an actual sense of humor, which is scarcely evident in Peele's plays.

Read the sonnets and "A Lover's Complaint", and I'll finish up The Winter's Tale presently.

Finished Much Ado About Nothing. Next up I'll read The Winter's Tale.

Finished the first quarto (1603) version of Hamlet and am currently more than halfway through Much Ado About Nothing. I'm thinking about also reading The Winter's Tale today because Radio Österreich International is broadcasting Karl Goldmark's Ein Wintermärchen from the Wexford Festival, which I already heard but would be happy to listen to again I love Goldmark's music.

Read the Editor's Preface, General Introduction, and King Henry VI, Part 1. Also tempted to claim I read Titus Andronicus because I did... but in another edition while I was waiting for this to arrive. The temptation is doubled because the editor of Titus for the Arden Shakespeare, Jonathan Bate, was also a main editor of the text I read it out of, The RSC Shakespeare.

Up to Book 2. I had promised myself that rereading these works in this edition would be the way I'd usher in the new year, so here I am listening to Musikalisches Opfer (Musical Offering) by J. S. Bach on Baroque and Beyond and reading one of my favorite books. What could be better?

Up to the final essay on The Two Noble Kinsmen.

Up to Part II, "The Shakespeare Effect", chapter 6, "Original Genius"

Finished The Tempest, which was a profoundly moving masterpiece. Now up to Henry VIII, which will be the final play I'll read out of the First Folio, even though I still have The Two Noble Kinsmen to read in The Shakespeare Apocrypha.

Read the essays on The Winter's Tale and The Tempest.

Up to "A Bit of Luck for Mabel".

Up to chapter 3, "Decoding".

Up to Chapter 5, "Shakespeare's Peculiarity"

Finished The Winter's Tale. Magnificent as always. Next up is the greatest of the late romances, The Tempest. After that, I'm only going to have Henry VIII by Shakespeare and John Fletcher in the First Folio, and only that and The Two Noble Kinsmen by Shakespeare and Fletcher (read from The Shakespeare Apocrypha edited by C. F. Tucker Brooke) left in the project as a whole.

Finished Cymbeline and I loved it. Next up is one of my favorite of the late romances and one that's seasonally appropriate, The Winter's Tale.

Up to chapter 4, "Marlowe's Ghost".

Finished the chapter on Cymbeline. Next up is the essay about The Winter's Tale, one of my favorite late romances.

Up to The Broken Heart by John Ford. I read A New Way to Pay Old Debts earlier this year, and this will be a duplicate of what I read last year. But that's how it goes. Anyway, I was hardly upset at having the chance to reread Massinger's brilliant play.

Finished The Birth of Merlin, which was actually quite a good play. Now the only remaining play is The Two Noble Kinsmen by William Shakespeare and John Fletcher, which I'll be reading as the final play in my Shakespeare project.

Up to chapter 2: "Reading". I just read the introduction and first chapter and already I'm over 1/3rd of the way through.

Finished Coriolanus, Shakespeare's final tragedy. From here on out, it's late romances and one history play. The next play is Cymbeline.

Finished Coriolanus, Shakespeare's final tragedy. From here on out, it's late romances and one history play.

Read the chapters on Pericles and Coriolanus, and I also read Pericles itself earlier and I'm currently halfway through Coriolanus, Shakespeare's final tragedy. Next up is the chapter on Cymbeline.

Up to A New Way to Pay Old Debts by Philip Massinger, but first I'll read The Birth of Merlin, or the Child Hath Found Its Father by William Rowley from The Shakespeare Apocrypha edited by C. F. Tucker Brooke, since the anthology doesn't include a solo play by Rowley.

Finished Antony and Cleopatra. Now the next play in the First Folio is Shakespeare's final tragedy, Coriolanus, but first I'll read Pericles in a facsimile edition of the first quarto (1609).

Up to the chapter on Pericles, Prince of Tyre.